Published on: 08/07/2022
Land staking, Ronin bridge reopening may save Axie Infinity
To the surprise of hardly anyone, the infamous $600 million cyberattack incident in March, as well as the recent cryptocurrency market crash in general, have reduced the value of Axie Infinity and its peers in the play-to-earn space. As the market surpassed and then entered what is now a deep bear market, AXS fell from an all-time high near $170 to its current price of $15.20.
Axie Infinity’s community is actively encouraging users who have had their funds restored to return to the game. What appears to be happening is the opposite, however — Axie keeps losing users. According to Jeff Zirlin, co-founder of Axie Infinity, only 368,000 players logged in last week, continuing a slow decline that began after the game peaked at 2.7 million weekly players in November.
The future of P2E gaming is currently unknown, and supporters are waiting to see whether Axie’s fortunes have dipped once and for all. However, perhaps all is not lost yet — to combat this bleak position, Axie has implemented several performance-enhancing features, such as land staking and reopening the Ronin bridge.
Land staking and reopening the Ronin bridge
Land stake parcels as a method of generating AXS tokens are among the most recent developments in the Axie Infinity ecosystem. The move may prove to be effective as it has been popular among Axie holders, with at least 87 percent of each of the various levels of plots already staked, according to the Ronin Chain explorer. Apart from the progress in land staking, several land plots sold for more than 130 ETH ($158,033.20) each, indicating that interest in the game remains high.
Some members of the community are concerned about how the daily rewards of 11,194.62 AXS for the land owners will affect the token’s price as supply grows, however. The platform also provides AXS staking at a present value of 72 percent, but only 38.47 percent of the existing total supply is placed, implying that a large portion of the supply is available on the open market and could be sold off.
Meanwhile, the reopening of the Ronin bridge with increased security is certainly a positive sign for the game. Prior to the reopening, an internal audit and two external audits were performed. The two external audits were carried out by Certik and Verichain. The bridge’s assets are “fully backed 1:1”, and the project introduced 11 new validators.
The reopening of the Ronin bridge and the launch of land staking, according to DappRadar data, have had a significant impact on the amount transacted. These advancements have also resulted in a slight increase in the number of regular network visitors and transactions. However, these figures remain substantially lower than the 2021 highs of 744,000 users and 6.7 million transactions.
For now, the community is responding positively to the recent changes, according to Alyssa Exposito, a Cointelegraph contributor. “I think once people begin to see and take notice of how the project enables and helps fund other creators to build on top of it, it’ll gain more traction on the possibilities of blockchain gaming,” she said.
